


Cursed

by camichats



Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Evil Wyatt Halliwell, Flashbacks, Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest, Unchanged Future (Charmed 1998), Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-10 15:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20853785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: Bianca was sent to the past to retrieve Chris for Wyatt. Chris knew that as soon as he saw Wyatt again he wouldn't be able to say no to him, but he also knew that he couldn't outrun Bianca. The past is filled with shadows, but the present isn't much better.





	Cursed

Chris stared at the little baby Wyatt in the crib. It was hard to look at him and see the evil ruler of the Underworld that Chris was familiar with. This Wyatt was so innocent, so cherub like. Blonde hair so light it practically glowed, chubby cheeks, and the happy demeanor all babies seemed to have. Even as a baby though, Wyatt wasn't like everyone else. He'd vanquished several demons already, and strangely the part that hurt Chris the most was how Wyatt hadn't trusted him at first. He knew that this baby version of him had no reason to trust Chris-- that he had no idea what they were to each other-- but it still hurt. It hurt more than the way his aunts and mother had tried to vanquish him and still trusted him so little. They were on better footing now, but he still had secrets, and they still wanted to know more about him. At times they got along, and the rest of the time they were peering at him suspiciously. Everything would be worth it if he could succeed in his mission though. 

Baby Wyatt looked up at him and made a happy little noise, gesturing cheerfully with the toys he had clutched in his hands. Chris couldn't help but smile in return. _ What happened to you? _

With that thought, his good mood evaporated, and he pat Wyatt on the head before walking away. He had things to do in the past, he hadn't come here just to see what his brother looked like as a baby-- no matter how adorable. 

Paige orbed into the Manor in time to see him hunched over his notes. "Planning another demon strike?" 

He looked up, and she jokingly made karate moves. 

"Give me time to eat lunch and then I can go." 

Chris shook his head, leaning back. "No, you're fine. No 'demon strike' planned." 

"Oh?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "Reaching a plateau in the hunt for the great evil you won't tell us about?" 

"It's not a joke, Paige. If we can't find out who it is that gets to him-" 

"The future will be a miserable place, yeah yeah yeah." 

Chris grit his teeth. "This is serious." 

Paige looked at him for a moment, then dropped the teasing attitude. With a sigh, she dropped in the seat across from him at the table. "I know it's serious. Believe me, there is nothing any of us want more than to keep Wyatt safe, but you're running yourself ragged like this. You're no use to Wyatt if you're half-dead." 

He'd heard that before, but it had been said by a demon opposing Wyatt while they were torturing him. The half-memories were everywhere these days. When he'd first shown up, he had expected that. They had tapered off after a while, and he'd hoped that that would be the way it stayed. But now it was a daily struggle to remind himself why he had to stay in the past. "Yeah, I know," was what Chris said, rubbing at his eyes. "I just don't want to miss anything." 

"You'll be fine," Paige said, smiling at him. She hesitated before adding, "You're not alone here, you know. All of us want to keep Wyatt safe. So the next time you want to take a break? Tell me, and I'll take over researching for a few days." 

"Thanks Paige, but you have your own life. I'm not going to take that away from you." 

"Piper's been talking to you, huh." 

"That's one way of putting it," Chris muttered. Piper had given him a lecture that made him feel like dirt, even though one of her main points was 'Don't you remember your life before you became a whitelighter?' and that didn't apply to him. It was followed by 'You once enjoyed a life without magic, don't you remember what that was like?', and his life had always had magic. A Charmed One for a parent-- even Piper, who was determined to have a non-magical part of her life-- and a brother who was the Twice-Blessed didn't lend itself to living without magic for even a moment. But he couldn't exactly say that, so he had nodded. "I'm here, so you don't need to worry about demons as much. I plan, you show up for the vanquish." 

"Another idea of Piper's?" 

"Yeah." Taking advice wasn't something Chris was used to, but he didn't really have a choice here. Legendarily stubborn, indeed. Fuck knows that Wyatt had inherited that Halliwell gene, and despite them being on opposite sides of the war, Chris wasn't used to them butting heads the way he did with his mother and aunts in this time. 

* * *

Right from the start, Chris had known it wasn't right. No one had to tell him to keep it a secret, he just knew. Brothers didn't do this. But everyone he considered family was dead except for Wyatt and Grandpa (and Grandpa was getting old, so even if he beat the cancer he wasn’t expected to live for very long), and he was desperate to hold onto what he had left. He and Wyatt had always been unusually close, but they were the sons of a Charmed One and that sibling bond had been legendary. Grandpa hadn't even really noticed when it turned from normal brotherly love to something else.

* * *

Leo orbed in quietly while Chris was in the kitchen making a potion. "Where's Piper?" he asked suddenly. 

Chris jumped, the bowl of pig's feet shattering on the ground. "Damn it," he bit out, using his powers to bring the ingredients back up to the counter. "I'm not her babysitter." If he was _ anyone's _ babysitter here, it would be Wyatt. Not that Piper was likely to let him do that, but it was the most accurate to his reason for being here. He walked to the closet and grabbed the broom and dustpan. He could've used his powers for the clean-up as well, but he was so used to Piper requiring their chores be done without magic that he did it automatically. It didn't matter that it had been nearly a decade since he'd lived in the Manor like that, it was just instinct. 

Leo gave a humorless chuckle. "See, you say that Chris, but I know you're keeping tabs on them." 

"They're my charges." 

"Which means you should know where Piper is." 

"You're an Elder, can't you check?" 

Leo narrowed his eyes at Chris, then closed them, sensing for her. When he opened his eyes again, it was to look at Chris suspiciously. "Would it have been so hard to say that she's in the sunroom with Wyatt?" 

"What are you even doing down here anyways?" Chris asked. "Shouldn't you be Up There instead of bothering your ex-wife?" 

Leo didn't say anything to that, he just walked out of the room. 

Chris turned back to the potion, noticeably more angry than before. It wasn't ruined though, so no harm done. He took a deep breath to try and get Leo out of his head, checking the recipe as he refocused. 

* * *

"Chris," Wyatt whispered, padding closer to his bed. 

"Mm?" 

"Did I wake you up?" 

"'s fine," Chris mumbled, propping himself up. "Wass wrong?" 

"What, I can't miss you?" Wyatt said with a grin. He sat on the edge of the bed, running his fingers through Chris's hair to tame the bedhead a little. 

Wyatt had started touching him more often. They'd shared hugs all the time when they were kids, but at some point, when Chris was still a kid but Wyatt was becoming a teenager, that had stopped. Now it was on the rise again, but Chris still found himself occasionally surprised by it. "Not in the middle of the night, no. Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine," he said, but it was obvious there was more to it. 

When it didn't look like he was going to offer anything else, Chris prompted, "But?" 

"I just wanted to make sure you were safe." 

"Why wouldn't I be?" Chris asked with a frown. 

Wyatt shrugged. "I was hunting demons, and... I guess I got worried." 

"Hunting demons? By yourself?! Wyatt, why didn't you tell me, I would have gone with you." 

"That's why." He put a hand on the back of Chris's neck and pulled him in, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. "Sorry I woke you up," he said, starting to rise from the bed. 

"Does Mom know?" 

Wyatt glanced back at him. "No." The 'and she's not _ going _ to know' went unsaid. 

"Take me with you." 

"No." 

"You need someone to watch your back," Chris pleaded. 

There was a moment of indecision, and he walked back to the bed. "I won't do it anymore, alright? Is that better?" 

Chris knew he was lying, that Wyatt was only telling him this so that he would stay at home and be safe. "Okay," he said. "I want you to be safe too. You know that, right?" 

Wyatt smiled at him. "Course I do." He ruffled Chris's hair and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Sweet dreams." 

* * *

Bianca came back, and Chris felt a frisson of panic. He closed the club door hurriedly, glancing back behind him to see if anybody had noticed her. "What are you doing here? If anyone sees you-" 

"Shh, it'll all be over soon." 

He was surprised when her hand plunged into his chest, though maybe he shouldn't have been. Wyatt had obviously sent her, and he must have pulled back on the order 'Harm Chris and Die' in the interest of getting him back as soon as possible. It took him a couple hours to figure out where Chris had gone, and then he'd sent Bianca through to bring him back. Time travel had certain constraints that even Wyatt couldn't bypass, and it meant that he hadn't been able to send her back to the exact moment that Chris had traveled. 

Piper walked into the room before Bianca could finish draining his powers and blew her up. She'd regenerate of course, but she'd probably direct it outside so Piper wouldn't see, and _ Chris _ sure as hell wasn't going to tell her about it. 

"Who was that?" she asked, looking worriedly at the spot where Bianca had been as she helped Chris back to his feet. 

"I have no idea," he lied, and Piper didn't seem to think twice about it. 

Her and Phoebe and Paige wouldn't let it go, and he tried to force them to focus on Wyatt. Bianca didn't fail her missions; Chris would be gone soon, and Wyatt's best chance at getting saved would fall on their shoulders. "Guys!" he interrupted. "Can we please focus on what's important here?" 

"We _ are _ Chris," Phoebe said. "Someone's after you, we have to deal with that." 

"It's already been dealt with, Piper blew her up." 

"What if there's more?" Paige asked. 

"There won't be." 

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Piper said, eyes stuck to a page in the Book. "Ever heard of the Phoenix clan?" 

Chris rolled his eyes as Piper explained it to her sisters, neither of whom had heard of them before-- which quite frankly, meant they had been lucky. Granted, Bianca was the best to have come from their line in a long time, but they still weren't people you wanted on your tail. Chris had been careful to avoid entangling with them during his time in the past. 

"They're mercenaries," she said. "They call themselves neutral, but they have demonic powers. Vanquishing potion here should take care of them." 

"Them?" Chris interrupted before this could get even more out of hand. "There was one, and Piper blew her up." 

"Okay," Paige said, "but they're a clan. If she failed, someone else will come to finish the job." 

"In this case, killing you," Phoebe said, as if Chris didn't know that. 

"Yeah, I got that, thanks," he said, rolling his eyes again. "Why are you so convinced that this is about me? I'm the whitelighter of the Charmed Ones, one of whom is the mother of the most powerful witch in existence. They're definitely not after me. They're either after you or Wyatt, so why don't you focus on that?" 

"Chris, you were _ attacked_," Phoebe said. "How can you brush this off?" 

"Because I'm not hurt! Look at me," he said, gesturing to his chest which as far as they could see, was uninjured, "not a scratch." 

"I still think you're treating this too lightly," Piper said. 

"Fine, I'm taking it seriously," he lied, but it was a lie in a way that was different than usual. He knew how this was going to end, and pretending to them wasn't going to really help. He was freaking the fuck out, and his last hope for Wyatt’s future was to convince them to take care of it in his absence. "Pay. Attention. To Wyatt. Because I'm not worth all this trouble, but he definitely is. Take out a witch's whitelighter, and they're vulnerable. They probably didn't realize that I can't heal, so they thought it would be the smartest thing to get me out of the way first. So you can focus on the rest of the coven if you want, but you'll be wasting your time. I'll try to find out who hired them so that we can stop this before they hire someone else." Without waiting for a response, he orbed away. His chest ached like a motherfucker, and he needed to double check that it wasn't bleeding through his shirt. It probably wasn't since none of them had said anything, but it might be too close for comfort. 

He went to one of the bathrooms downstairs, but at least he wasn't in the same room as them. He made sure the door was locked before standing in front of the mirror. His hands weren't shaking because he'd dealt with far worse injuries, but he dreaded what he was going to see. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and slowly peeled it away to expose the center of his chest, where Bianca's hand had broken into him. He swallowed thickly as he saw a red, festering wound. 

Bianca had explained this power as an infection once, and it certainly looked the part. She'd started to drain his magic, and unless she finished what she'd done, he would die. Of course, if she did finish what she started, he wouldn't have his powers. He'd like to say that Wyatt planned on returning them once he was safely back in the future, but what better way to keep Chris safe and out of trouble than to withhold them from him? He'd probably give them back eventually, once he felt Chris was firmly under his thumb again. 

He was going back. God he didn't want to. Bianca was the best, Wyatt would settle for no one else to come get him, which meant that whether he liked it or not, he was going back. His hands clenched into fists as he glared at the reflection of his injury. He'd had _ one chance _ to fix this, and he'd blown it. The sisters would do their best, but Chris had been careful about what he told them, so they didn't know exactly what to look for anyways. If he'd come out and said "Wyatt turns evil," he wouldn't have had the time to explain that someone had caused it before they kicked him out. Plus, you know, future consequences. If they treated him differently growing up, always expecting him to be on the verge, that wouldn't be any good for him either. And if he could fix it without having to tell them _ anything_, well, that was what he had tried in the first place. There was hope that the Charmed Ones would manage to save the world once again, but it was a slim hope. 

* * *

Bianca pulled him through the portal, and they appeared in the manor's attic. The attic the way he'd gotten used to in the past couple years was here, not the way he'd lived with it the last few months. This was a cold, detached museum room. This wasn't the altar room they'd grown up in and crafted to suit their needs before everything fell apart. 

His eyes were drawn automatically to Wyatt, an imposing figure with his hands held loosely behind his back and every inch of him radiating power. 

"Leave us," Wyatt ordered. His eyes flickered to Bianca, and he added, "All of you." Chris wanted to sigh, knowing that he wouldn’t get his powers back for a while, maybe months. Wyatt always felt like he needed a punishment when he ‘acted out’ like this. 

The demons surrounding him left, and Bianca bowed her head before following suit and shimmering out. 

Wyatt's voice was low when he spoke next. Furious. "Of all the people to betray me, Chris, I never thought it would be you." 

It hurt that Wyatt believed Chris would betray him. After everything they’d been through together, he thought that? "I didn't go back to betray you Wyatt; I went back to save you." 

"Save me?" Wyatt repeated. It was clear he was humoring Chris and that he didn't believe it. "From what?" 

"From yourself. From whatever evil it is that turned you." 

"Hm,” he said shortly. “You're still on that." 

"There's good and there's evil Wyatt! That's how it is, you can rule the entire world, but even you can't change that." 

"Power, Chris." He walked closer until they were sharing the same space. He raised a hand and cupped Chris's face. "Good and evil is what killed our family, but it won't kill us." 

"Because you're powerful, right? And that's what makes this okay?" 

"That's what makes us _ safe_. Does anything else really matter?" He leaned closer, and their noses were bumping together, their breath intermingling. 

If Chris were stronger, he would back up right now. But he'd had one defiance against Wyatt, and that's all he managed. This time, he leaned into it. Wyatt closed the last bit of space between them, kissing him softly. Weak, people would call him. Demons would hiss it at him when they sensed how much less powerful he was than Wyatt. The resistance always thought it for how long it had taken him to do anything against him, and after they lost another person, they would shout it at Chris in their mourning. Even Wyatt thought he was, and he was the one that loved Chris more dearly than anyone else ever had; that's why he was so convinced that Chris needed protecting. 

But, as he kissed Wyatt back, this was the first time he'd truly thought it about himself. 

"Don't ever betray me again," Wyatt breathed, still so close that every word was something Chris could feel as easily as hear. There was a current of warning there, but in the next moment it was gone. "I missed you." 

This time, Chris was the one that kissed him. "I missed you too." 

Wyatt shimmered them back to his home, a building Chris had long since thought himself warded from. "I love you," he said, now that there was no one to overhear it. 

* * *

Chris was seventeen, and Grandpa was six feet under. Wyatt really was all he had left in the world, but there was something wrong with it. With the world, that is. Things were falling apart around them, but Wyatt was always there for him. Wyatt even found them an apartment when the manor felt too empty to keep living in, and neither of them said anything about the single bedroom. 

Wyatt had kissed him a while ago, and Chris… well, Chris kissed him back. Again and again every time it happened until there wasn’t a question about what they were doing anymore. Any one of those moments should have been life-changing, but it felt like a lifeline when water was rushing in around him. 

He didn’t have doubts about anything until Wyatt showed up at their home, Excalibur in hand and blood on the blade. The blood of mortals. Because demons? Their blood had a tang to it, one that stained the air and tainted it. Excalibur didn’t have any of that along its length right now. “Wyatt?” he asked, voice tight and frightened. 

Wyatt turned around in surprise, the sword vanishing as he tried to hide it from Chris, but it was too late; he’d seen it, and he’d recognized the damning evidence. “I thought you were at class Chris. What are you doing home?” 

“Did you kill someone?” 

“Chris,” Wyatt tried to soothe, taking a step towards him. He froze when Chris stumbled away from him in fear. “I’m not going to hurt you. Never, you hear me? And neither will anyone else. I finally found a way to keep you safe for good.” 

“What did you do?” he whispered, horrified. 

“I brought order.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

“Demons can’t try to kill you if they’re under my command. Mortals can’t call for witches deaths if they know that there’s worse out there.” 

“What did you do?” he repeated, not wanting to understand the things Wyatt was telling him. 

This time, when Wyatt walked to him, he didn’t flinch. He let Wyatt put a hand on the side of his face and kiss him. He kissed back automatically, leaning into Wyatt fully as he wished for the confusion to go away. Wyatt always took care of him, took care of everything. 

“I’ll always take care of you, Chris. Never doubt that,” Wyatt said, but there was a sinking feeling in Chris’s stomach. All magic came with a price; what was going to be the price for what Wyatt had done? 


End file.
